Murray Hill Moment

Murray Hill is the Manhattan neighborhood bounded by 42nd Street, Fifth Avenue, and 27th Street. The building in which I work is located just inside Murray Hill, at 42nd and Lexington, and I've adopted it as my "work neighborhood" because I'm not the biggest fan of Midtown, which reportedly ranges from 23rd Street to 59th Street or perhaps 40th to 59th. Greedy, greedy Midtown!

This morning, on my way to work, I was stopped at the corner of 42nd and Lex. Police officers had lined both sides of Lexington with barricades in preparation for a presidential motorcade, and they weren't letting anyone cross either street. Pointing at the Socony Mobil building, I asked, "How can I get to that building... right there?" One relatively firm but nice police office told me that I could backtrack to Park Avenue to head further downtown -- but that it'd still be about 20 minutes before they'd let anyone cross Lexington. Another police officer -- not as nice, this one -- lashed out at a frustrated woman, spitting, "Why didn't you take a week's vacation like everyone else?"

Harf. Look around you, Officer Cranky; plenty of people didn't take a vacation. In any event, I stood waiting to cross the street for 20 minutes and think I may have seen the president in one of the cars. I've been wondering how far the RNC brouhaha would spill over from Madison Square Garden.